Coffee Links for the Week September 26, 2011

Lots about Starbucks today…When you are the world’s biggest coffee company, you’re going to make news.

A Starbucks employee got fired recently after making a video of himself singing about his day at work. Oops. For anyone who has worked as a barista (especially for the big green apron), or any other service industry, there is enough truth in the song to be funny (warning: contains family-unfriendly language). link

Can we just go ahead and label coffee a superbeverage? A study now shows that the drink helps older female smokers avoid depression (but what about younger male non-smokers?) link

To celebrate its 40^th anniversary, Starbucks has released a t-shirt with a coffee-stain design that costs $85. Anyone running out to get one? link

A car running on coffee grounds recently set a speed record, reaching 77.5 mph. Looking at the pictures, is that a flux capacitor they’ve got in there? link

Coffee + hard alcohol = Four Loko for the upper class. link

National Coffee Day is coming September 29^th. Krispy Kreme is giving away free coffee. link

There are some sick people out there. No question about it. I would be mad as hell if this happened to someone in my family too, and I hope that they nail the sick sonofabi--- who put the camera in a Starbucks restroom. But suing Starbucks for being negligent? That doesn’t make a lot of sense either. link

Coffee news and notes

After two weeks away from Portland, I made it back down the gorge. It was sooooo nice to be welcomed back with 60-degree, cloudy weather all week. Okay, maybe that’s not true, but it was nice to get back to some good coffee shops. My favorite café in Dayton has closed, so I spent a couple weeks coffee-free, surviving (but barely).

In other news, school has started up again in most places, and hopefully, so will the regularity of these blog posts. Here are a few links for your Friday afternoon:

Better watch what’s in that coffee: a woman in Florida spiked her husband’s coffee with Xanax (a prescription drug used to treat anxiety) in an effort to “calm him down.” The local police disagreed with her account, charging her with attempted murder. link

Fortunately, we live in a very different era than 50 years ago, especially when thinking of coffee, advertising and the relationship between men and women. Someone put together a video called “Coffee Jerks,” with TV clips from the 1950s and 60s. It’s almost painful to watch.  link

High school students across Ontario, Canada, will have to sneak their caffeine into schools after the government banned coffee from being sold on campus. Toronto’s Globe and Mail (newspaper) is not too impressed with the ban. Student seem to be getting around the ban, however, as some are bringing coffee makers from home to plug in by their lockers. Really? link

Think that having a light rail line outside your door will help your coffee business? Some café owners in Minneapolis might disagree. link

Alec Baldwin complaining about a Starbucks barista with an attitude problem? The axiom “it takes one to know one” might be applicable here. link

If you only read the headline to this article, you might think to yourself “what happens when we run out of bags?” Not to worry, though. We can always re-use them…

Starbuckian K-cuppers will be able to get their fix at home starting in November. link

I’m going to leave out the link to the article for this one because I want to support local businesses, but when a coffee shop owner brags about having 30 flavors of syrup available, she ought to take coffee out of their business name…

Vacation caffeination

I’m on vacation the next couple weeks, which really means that I went home to work harvest. If you missed it last year, I wrote a few stories about harvest. Here’s one of my favorites that I wrote while I was in Beijing (link). I’ll try to post a few times while I’m here, spending all day in the field doesn’t leave a lot of time for writing.

Here are a couple links from around the coffee world:

Headed to LA and need some coffee recommendations? Oliver Strand, who writes The New York Times’ Ristretto column, just visited and has some thoughts to share with you. link

Could coffee drinkers finally getting some good news about coffee prices? It appears so, at least if you drink Maxwell House. link All of those recent price hikes? They’re working, at least for shareholders (according to the video embedded in the article).

Starbucks’ Howard Schultz is urging CEOs of American corporations to stop all political campaign donations until Congress starts compromising and coming up with forward-thinking, long-term solutions to our nation’s economic problems.  link [Note how the content of the article was molded to fit the WSJ’s political viewpoint. The CEO quoted in the article was not even a part of Schultz’ group and he was only quoted as concerned with cutting spending.]

I know it’s bad form to answer a question with a question, but the answer to this headline should be, “Will anyone care?” link According to the author, DD’s “pastries and coffee are craved by a large portion of the western United States.”  Really? How many DDs are there in Portland?

And with that, I’m out…

Friday Links - August 19

Some coffee-related links to distract you from your Friday afternoon work:

I have a hard time imagining anyone getting kicked out of a Portland coffee shop for bringing in their guide dog, but Dovercourt, Essex (UK), is not Portland. link

Guatemalan coffee is famous around the world for its quality, but coffee from Honduras, just next door, isn’t. This is changing, according to the WSJ. link

Green Mountain Coffee’s founder is betting big on the revival of Krispy Kreme’s fortunes. Chairman Robert Stiller now owns over 7 million shares of the donut chain. link

Here’s a link for coffee-loving science enthusiasts. Have you ever seen a coffee stain on a napkin or tablecloth and noticed how there seems to be a dark ring around the edge of it? Ever wondered why? Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have figured out why, and it has to do with particle shape. link (includes a video)

Starbucks is trying to limit Laptopistani colonization in some of its New York cafés by covering up electrical outlets. With extended-life batteries that are increasingly more common, I doubt the move will have much impact on the number of laptops in the cafés. link

Speaking of people using computers in cafés, check out this guy (shall we call him a Macistani?): link

Score one for free speech. A defamation lawsuit by Gorilla Coffee, a NYC coffee shop, against former employees who posted their complaints against the company online, has been thrown out. link

Starbucks has been in the news in China lately, receiving criticism for selling mugs with a drawing of a famous 11^th century Chinese judge on them. Apparently, the deceased judge’s 36^th-generation ancestor saw the image and was not happy. This is a great example of how much longer historical memories are in some countries than in the United States. link

I don’t normally link to companies’ press releases, but since this one is from Portland, and is sort of related to coffee (a coffee shaving system?), I figured I’d pass it along. #keepitweirdpdx  link

Enjoy the weekend!

This week's links: July 29

It was a quiet week for coffee news, but nevertheless, here are a few links:

Coffee drinkers worried about high coffee prices may get some relief in the future. It looks like Brazil is set to have record coffee crop in 2012. link Ghana is also set to increase its production over the next several years. link

Need a caffeine jolt? An entrepreneur from Berkeley is selling a cold vacuum-brewed coffee concentrate with 40 times the amount of caffeine that regular coffee has. That’s right—40 times. I hope it comes with a warning label. link

Apparently, specialty coffee is unique enough to make it onto Bizarre Foods, a Travel Channel show. link

I already gave some of my thoughts on Dunkin’ Donuts’ IPO earlier this week, and CNBC has an interview with the company’s CEO about what he thought. One interesting fact in the article was that the only DD on the West Coast is located in Portland. link

Wait! That might not be true. I tried to find out which Portland neighborhood was lucky enough to have the store, but according to Google Maps, all three former locations are closed. Aww, too bad… link

Here’s a “Portland” photo for the week:

Enjoy your weekend!